(EDITOR'S NOTE -- Today, June 27, 2016, would have
been the 89th birthday of the great CBS-TV children's TV host, Bob
Keeshan, better known to the Baby Boomer generation as "Captain
Kangaroo." Keeshan passed away in 2004, and I've spent years trying
to recover the telephone interview I did with him as a St.
Petersburg Times correspondent, published September 19, 1984. I'm
pleased to say I finally found it and upgraded the audio quality.
You can now read the interview as published or, for the first time
ever, listen to our actual conversation. I hope you'll enjoy this
classic edition of Mr. Media and share it with your friends and
family. -- Bob Andelman)

When it comes to children's television, Captain Kangaroo is a
man who knows what he's talking about. And what the soft-spoken
Captain is discussing these days is the scarcity of quality network
programing provided for kids. Captain Kangaroo, a.k.a. Bob Keeshan,
will address the subject at a free lecture at the University of
South Florida's Cooper Hall auditorium, CPR 103 (College of Arts
and Letters, Tampa campus), on Thursday at 8 p.m. He was last here
in 1976, taping segments of the program at Busch Gardens. His
appearance corresponds to the end of the Captain's nearly 30 years
on CBS. The end has been in sight for some time. In January 1982,
some CBS affiliates such as Tampa's WTVT-Ch. 13 dropped the weekday
morning Captain Kangaroo Show (it was picked up briefly by WFTS Ch.
28). Later that year, CBS Morning News was lengthened and for the
first time the Captain could only be seen on Saturday and Sunday
mornings. For a short time even the name and format of his show was
changed, to the fast-paced Wake Up. UNTIL December, the Captain
Kangaroo Show continues on weekend mornings, al­ though it has been
unavailable in Tampa Bay for some time. After the first of the
year, the future of the Captain, Mr. Greenjeans, Mr. Moose and
Grandfather Clock is uncertain.

BOB KEESHAN podcast excerpt: "I
feel very strongly that I'm able to take that role as advocate and
let people know how strongly I feel that society needs to do a
better job nurturing people.."

"We are searching for a time period on public television, where
we hope we will be on Monday to Friday and reach the audience that
the program has been designed and produced for over the many years.
I think there's a very strong chance," Keeshan said in a recent
telephone interview from his New York office. The people involved
in making decisions at CBS have displeased Keeshan but he says they
are doing "what they have to do. If the FCC didn't tell them they
were free to do what they wanted to do, they would make other
decisions. But with that unshackling of responsibility, the
stockholders have got to get their due, as much money as they
possibly can. That's the bottom line. "I might have some strong
feelings about the FCC and their doctrinaire feelings about letting
the marketplace function and take care of children. God knows the
marketplace certainly will take care of children but not the way we
expect it to," he adds. "WE'VE BEEN talking to PBS, and they have
nothing but enthusiasm for the project. The key factor really is
the finding of underwriting for it. Public television is not a very
wealthy system. They have a great deal of difficulty financing
their operations, especially since (President Reagan) has seen fit
to veto the latest appropriation for public television. They're in
difficult straits, so we have to find corporate underwriting. We're
seeking a far-sighted company that feels strongly about the future
of the nation to the extent that (the way) we nurture children
through television is important to the future of the nation,"
Keeshan says. If steps are not taken to improve the way children
are raised, Keeshan says, "we're going to be in trouble in this
country." Keeshan, now 57, was a 20-year­ old college undergraduate
when he started playing Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody in
1948. Five years later he left that show and played Corny the Clown
on Time for Fun and Tinker the Toymaker on Tinker's Workshop. On
Oct. 3, 1955, Captain Kangaroo premiered five mornings a week. (In
1967. the show added Saturday mornings as well for a few
seasons.)

THE NOW-FAMOUS character's name was an afterthought to
the creation of the Captain's personality. At the last minute
somebody said what are we going to call this thing? He had to come
up with a name. “Alliteration in those days – Rootie Kazootie,
Howdy Doody - seemed important. We thought of him as the captain of
a treasure house, a museum sort of place. We gave him a rank that a
guide might have, and because he had large pockets like the pouch
of a kangaroo, we called him Kangaroo, Captain Kangaroo. It was
alliterative," Keeshan recalls, "a little catchy."

BOB KEESHAN podcast excerpt: "We
thought of him as the captain of a treasure house, a museum sort of
place. We gave him a rank that a guide might have, and because he
had large pockets like the pouch of a kangaroo, we called him
Kangaroo, Captain Kangaroo."

Captain Kangaroo's growth represents development over periods of
time, including on-the-job training and research outside of
television. "I did not, on Howdy Doody," Keeshan admits, "have any
knowledge of the needs of children or how we could meet them. But
in 1951, my son was born, so I began looking at television from a
different perspective, viewing it as a parent, showing some
concern in those very early days, fairly excited for the potential
of using television to instruct the child emotionally and
culturally. I began seriously thinking and studying ways in which
that could be done. My whole approach to children changed
radically." Keeshan and his wife Jeanne eventually had three
children of their own, Michael, 33, Laurie, 31, and Maeve, 29. They
have two grandsons, both almost three years old. LIKE MOST children
growing up between 1955 and 1982, the young Keeshans watched the
Captain as any child might do. They were never tested, never asked
what they liked or disliked. "They were never even told I was the
Captain until they got to an age when they realized that. We lived
in a suburban community that very much respected our wishes in that
respect so they were very ordinary kids, the same as if I had been
an airline pilot, executive of a company, something of that sort.
“If they felt very strongly about something, they might tell their
mother about it,” Keeshan continues, “the same way any child might
say, ‘Gee, I liked the dancing bear and what he did today.’ I never
depended on them as a laboratory.” How good or bad is today's
television for kids? Keeshan responds by asking how good today's
television is for adults. The juvenile audience is not monolithic,
he insists. It's not one individual and therefore one program is
good for all and another is bad for all. "Children bring, as adults
do, different backgrounds, experiences and stages of emotional
development to a program. So for some children a particular program
is fine viewing. For other children it's not appropriate viewing at
all. The same is true with adults. We have to recognize there are
millions of different human beings in the children's audience, each
of them unique. No two have ever been born alike. "SOME CHILDREN,"
Keeshan suggests, "at their stage of emotional and cultural
development, are able to watch a particular program and benefit
from it. Other children might well be harmed by that same program.
That implies that parents have a very great need of responsibility
to intervene in the program selection of their children. "A lot of
parents would never think of just sending their children out to
play and not be concerned about who they were playing with, where
they were playing or what activity they were engaged in. American
children spend much more time with television than they do with
their real life sandbox playmates and are being much more
influenced by their television viewing than by real life playmates.
Parents ought to be at least as much concerned about their
television playmates as their real life playmates," he says.

BOB KEESHAN podcast excerpt: "I
might have some strong feelings about the FCC and their doctrinaire
feelings about letting the marketplace function and take care of
children. God knows the marketplace certainly will take care of
children but not the way we expect it
to."

Keeshan says there was a good deal more programing for young
people 15 and 20 years ago than there is today. Public television
has always had an "excellent" commitment to children, he says, but
the commercial networks have fallen a long way from the days of
Howdy Doody, Rooti Kazootie, Ding-Dong School, The Mickey Mouse
Club. Mr. Wizard and Lucky Pup. "There were a substantial number of
programs, most of fairly high quality. Maybe they weren't as
educational as Sesame Street or Mister Rogers are today, but they
certainly were not programs that harmed the child in any way."
KEESHAN HAS mostly compliments for Nickelodeon and the Disney
Channel, the only cable channels directed at children, but is
bothered that parents have to pay for the services. "The people who
need and use television the most are children in homes below the
poverty level who certainly can't afford services like that, Twenty
percent of the children of this nation are living below the poverty
level - one in five. There's no money in their family budget for
recreation," he says. A lot of the Captain's off-air time these
days is spent in education, health care, and with organizations
like the National Council for Prevention of Child Abuse. He says
that while sexual abuse of children has become a "popular" top­ic,
attention should not be drawn away from ordinary physical and
psychological abuses, which can break the will of a child and leave
him or her with no self-esteem, "unable to accomplish anything
after 15 years of being told they're no good at this and that. I
think I owe that to children. I feel very strongly that I'm able to
take that role as advocate and let people know how strongly I feel
that society needs to do a better job nurturing people.”

About the Podcast

What is Mr. Media® Interviews? The curiosity of Terry Gross, the skepticism of John Oliver, the unpredictability of Howard Stern, and, on occasion, the zen of Jon Stewart! Since February 2007, more than 1,300 exclusive Hollywood, celebrity, pop culture video and audio podcast and print interviews by Mr. Media®, a.k.a., Bob Andelman, with newsmakers in TV, radio, movies, music, magazines, newspapers, books, websites, social media, politics, sports, graphic novels, and comics!